HHS: Spend Before SCOTUS Rules
[T]he administration has forged ahead, spending at least $2.7 billion since oral arguments in the case ended on March 28. That’s more than double the amount that was handed out in the three-month period leading up to the arguments, according to a POLITICO review of funding announcements from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Full article on outrageous government spending in Politico.
Outrageous.
Spending money on anything that is being challenged by a court is just plain dumb. I can understand their view that they need to stick to a schedule, stemming from the view that the bill will be upheld, but risking taxpayer money on that just isn’t responsible.
You never want to think anything is sure-fire in a legal proceeding, because it can always twist in ways you’ll never expect.
Supreme Court justices vote on their opinions shortly after hearing a case. In other words, the outcome was tallied long ago (possibly late March) but the decision has yet to be released. Some people speculate that former White House Solicitor General, Elena Kagan — now a Supreme Court Associate Justice — informed the White House of the outcome after the hearings. This leaves the question: is HHS spending money like a drunken sailor on shore leave because it knows the outcome?
Over at Forbes.com Avik Roy speculates that the individual mandate will get thrown out but the PPACA will stand. If that’s true, it will be a better outcome than the Supreme Court holding that the entire PPACA is constitutional. However, something would have to be done — the individual insurance market cannot survive the host of insurance regulations without the mandate.
If the mandate is thrown out, maybe Congress can replace it (and the exchange subsidies) with a refundable tax credit – without the silly insurance regulations and costly mandated benefits.
Nice metaphor, Buster.
If the WH does know the outcome, Buster’s drunken sailor theory is superfluous. Does it really make sense that the feds would blow money, knowing it was to no avail?
They may not be frugal people, but they aren’t idiots either, and they’re not going to pour money down the drain when they could use it to buy votes…
And @Devon, clowns are “silly,” not insurance regulations.
The money flows to groups in the states that support policies favored by the people awarding it. These groups then act as mouthpieces for various centrally designed campaigns to things like Medicaid expansions, more government run health care and, yes, silly insurance regulations.
@Alex, plenty of things go through legal proceedings that require administrators to steam ahead regardless. While it does seem wasteful, think about the counterexample, where the biggest overhaul of the country’s health care system is passed but fails to be implemented on time because its leadership had their hands tied by legal proceedings.
@Buster, 3 things. First, echo @Robert. Second, there was a tally in March, but justices can and often do change their votes several times throughout the deliberation process – that’s why it’s so long. And third, yeah, I remember when I heard my first conspiracy theory.
@Devon, that must be a joke. I don’t think anyone truly believes SCOTUS would sever: neither the federal government nor the states argued in favor of severability, and it only received lip service in oral arguments because it was supposedly an important component to cover. The justices are not so stupid as to believe that striking only the individual mandate would not fundamentally change the entire law, thereby flouting the intent of Congress.
@Brian, it’s a simile, not a metaphor.
@Ambrose, I too remember hearing my first conspiracy theory.
Robert Kennedy (the man after whom I was named) was investigating unions in Chicago as part of a Senate investigative committee. One of the men he investigated was named Red Dorfman, who took over the presidency of the Waste Handlers union after its previous president was murdered. Among those questioned after the president’s murder was a man named Rubenstein, who later changed his name and moved to Dallas, where he was in regular contact with Red Dorfman.
I am, of course, speaking of Jack Ruby, the man who shot the man who shot Robert Kennedy’s brother, President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
@Robert, what’s the implication? I don’t understand Dorfman or Rubenstein’s motivation for wanting Oswalt killed.
@Ambrose, a good conspiracy requires an imagination.
Clearly, Frank Sinatra used his mafia connections to place a hit on Kennedy, of whom Sinatra was jealous for sleeping with his little-known-to-be lover Marilyn Monroe. Robert Kennedy is also alleged to have slept with Miss Monroe. To perform the hit, Sinatra hired Carlos Marcello of the New Orleans Sicilian Mafia, who was upset with both Kennedy’s for throwing him out of a plane over central America in 1961(google it). Upon his return to America, Marcello hired Oswald through his uncle, who worked for Marcello, to kill Kennedy. Having not met Oswald, Marcello knew he would need a silence-man, so he hired the Dallas Italian Mafia-man Joseph Campisi to kill Oswald. Jack Ruby, a good friend of Campisi, visited his restaurant the day before Kennedy was shot. Campisi knew Ruby disliked the Kennedy’s because of the aforementioned investigations which forced him to move from Chicago and change his name, and decided he would be best to kill Oswald.
Obviously.